Bosnia’s outgoing international peace monitor ordered on Friday (July 23) to amend its penal code to allow prison sentences for denying the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, a view often expressed by nationalist Serbs.
High Representative Valentin Inzko’s decree stipulates that anyone who “publicly condone, deny, seriously despise or try to justify” genocide or war crimes committed during the 1992-95 conflict in Bosnia is the highest Sentenced to five years in prison.
In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb army occupied the United Nations-protected Srebrenica enclave in the eastern part of the country and killed approximately 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys, and they captured them.
This is the worst atrocity in Europe since the Second World War, and it was judged to be an act of genocide by two international courts.
Inzko’s 12-year term will end on August 1, when he will be replaced by Christian Schmidt of Germany, who can implement the law under the 1995 peace treaty that divided Bosnia into Bosnia-Croatia and Serbian entities And fire officials.
“Srebrenica’s genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity…cannot be forgotten or denied,” his decree reads.
It was welcomed by senior Bosnian politicians and condemned by Bosnian Serbs.
Milorad Dodik, a member of the Bosnian Tripartite Presidium and Bosnian Serb leader, stated that the decree may lead to the dissolution of the former Yugoslav Republic. He has repeatedly denied that there was genocide in Srebrenica.
“This is a nail in the Bosnian coffin,” he said at a press conference. “The Republika Srpska has no choice but to start… disintegration,” he said, referring to the semi-autonomous Serbian region of Bosnia.
Sefik Zaferovic, a Bosnian member of the President of Bosnia, said that Inzko “has fulfilled his obligations to the victim, his conscience and the Dayton Peace Agreement.”
The decree also stipulates a prison sentence for convicted war criminals for “recognizing… (and giving) souvenirs or any privileges.”
The Office of the High Representative in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, was established as part of the Dayton Agreement, which ended a war that killed 100,000 people.
The peace agreement split Bosnia into the Bosnian Croat Federation and the Republic of Serbia, the two being connected by a relatively weak trilateral inter-ethnic presidency.
